In an increasingly networked world, more and more traffic, such as data, voice, and video, is transmitted over public and proprietary networks. The networks are using high data rates (e.g., one hundred gigabits per second (Gbps)) to transport greater quantities of traffic within a period of time. Certain types of the networks, such as optical networks, transport the traffic by allocating channel spectrum bandwidth, using a fixed channel size scheme (e.g., in bandwidth increments of 50 gigahertz (GHz), 100 GHz, etc.), that is independent of a channel bit rate. Unfortunately, it is difficult to scale optical networks to transport greater quantities of traffic at even higher data rates, such as ultra-high data rates (e.g., one terabit per second (Tbps)), using the fixed channel size scheme.